The wedding took place on Saturday 7th May 2011 at Saint-Cyprien in the Mediterranean South Coast of France. At 5pm -ish.
That is a photo of Tom getting ready for the wedding...
Everyone gathered at the Hotel de Ville of Saint-Cyprien waiting for the bride to arrive...
This is me getting my hair done for the wedding.
Here you can see (from left to right) Danny Peters (Best Man), Lawrence Peet (Master of Ceremony), Tom Dudman (the groom), David Brown (Best Man). Danny and Dave are showing the wedding rings (I hope they didn't drop them!).
This is Tom with his parents, Clare and Christopher Dudman.
The guests were waiting for me....
...and waiting for about 30 minutes past the time of the wedding ceremony.
When finally, I was ready and took a taxi to the Town Hall...
...and arrived there very happy!
My bridesmaids were wearing 60's style turquoise dresses with silver shoes and a blue orchid in their hair (I did their hair, make up and bouquet).
My grandfather (Marcel Burliga) gave me away. I'm laughing because he was walking fast and I was pulling him back to go more slowly (he probably couldn't wait to get raid of me :D ).
Jean Romeo, Deputy-Mayor of Saint-Cyprien, celebrated our wedding. He was a very friendly fantastic guy! It was his first wedding. I was organising the ceremony (papers) with the person on the left and he asked me if I minded him doing our wedding because it was his first time. Well, I said it was my first time too, so why not? I was very happy he did it!
After getting married, came the kiss!
My grandmother (Colette Burliga) gave a very cute speech, she was all shy! She finished by a sentence in english which made everyone laugh (she doesn't know any word of english!). I think that she did a good job at reading it!
She was followed by Tom's mother (Clare Dudman), who told us the history of the family's name and stories of when she acquired the same surname. It was probably the only part of the ceremony where everyone could understand what was being said. She did a great job! She also made a great effort to end it with a sentence in french for the French people.
My sister, Harmonie Laurent (on the left), and Aurélie Thibault (on the right) did a very funny speech. My sister was saying a sentence in french and Lili was translating it in english. It reminded me of a little show made by children! Very cute and funny!
Guests had cones with dry lavender buds (it looked very much like rice!) which smelt very nice! However, it went everywhere! We woke up the next morning with lavender in still in bed!
We booked a little "touristic train" that is usually used for tourists to visit different places. I found this very friendly. We got to be with everyone all the time, waving at people in the streets, laughing, we had a good time.
We arrived on the beach at the Venue "Le Caliente" where we had a wine reception with tapas.
There is my wedding bouquet with the "Livret de Famille" where the official wedding certificate is signed. It is also used for parents to show that they are legal guardians of their children.
This was Tom's idea to put up our countries' flags (the french one has a slight problem on the photo but it has been put up by the staff, maybe they had a bit tto much to drink...they are French after all!).
The centerpiece consisted of a fish bowl with blue and white orchids with light blue marbles, a light in the middle and a floating candle.
I threw the bouquet and Lili's sister (Johanna) caught it! Let's hope it brings her luck!
Before the meal started, my grandfather gave a welcome speech (with a few words in english too!).
Lawrence Peet (aka. Loz) was our Master of Ceremony. I think that he did a fantastic job! He spoke in english AND french for everyone to understand the series of events happening in the evening.
After the main, Tom and I poured champagne over a pyramid of glasses (which didn't fall!)...
...we traditionally crossed arms and took a sip from our special glasses with the wedding date engraved, in english for Tom and in french for me...
...before Tom started his speech!
He was followed by Dave, who played a joke on Tom by asking him to choose in between two envelopes: one was "family and friendly" the other one "not so family-friendly). Fortunately, Tom picked the right one!
Danny made an excellent french speech which was quite romantic and elegant.
We cut the cake and fed each other. The cake looked quite horrible but at least it was delicious. It did not look anything like what I asked, but at least it made everyone laugh when we tried to cut the panels around it which was pure caramel with crushed almonds (basically, impossible to cut). Then people thought we had a fake cake, when in fact, we had to open one of the panels to find the cake in the middle.
Then came the Garter Game (not one of my favourite!). I was just happy that one of my friend (Julien Combet) won it!
Finally, came the first dance! Everyone thought that we were going to be rubbish at it! We chose a salsa dance on "luna llena" by Elvis Crespo and I think that we did a pretty good job! (well...I was very happy with it and enjoyed myself!).
Tom and his friends had some more wine (some of them finished all the champagne glasses and drunk a lot of wine = next day, he was with a good hungover!).
The next day, those who were willing to, took part of the couple's hunt! We also gave them a password to find which was ironically "divorce" to give to the hotel's receptionist to get our room number.
Afterwards, we all went out for a meal. It was nice to be able to talk to everyone after the wedding day! With French people on one side...
...and English people on the other.
